The future tenant, owned by Education Management Corp. of Pittsburgh, provides online classes for credit from The Art Institutes, Argosy University and South University.

"The building will have a lot of administrative offices for online instructors and administrative staff but no classes," said Chris Mackay, Chandler's director of economic development.

"It's about 450 jobs," she said. "It's an expansion, not a relocation."

The online company is considering expanding even more, said Larry Downey, executive vice president of Cushman & Wakefield in Phoenix, the broker that represented the tenant.

The tenant holds an option for a year to expand into the second Panattoni building next door, which was important to sealing the deal, Downey said.

The second building is slightly larger, and a mezzanine could be added for more space.

"They're thinking ahead . . . to the growth of the company," he said.

Downey said the company likely will move in August or September.

The CEO of Education Management is Todd S. Nelson, the former CEO of Phoenix-based Apollo Group who resigned his Apollo post in January 2006.

Nelson has been CEO of Education Management since February 2007.

The two-building, 92,112-square-foot Panattoni Chandler Airport Center is within Chandler Airport Center, a new 225-acre mixed-use business park near the Chandler Municipal Airport.

The Chandler lease is the largest lease signed in the Southeast Valley this year, according to the commercial information firm CB Richard Ellis.

The Phoenix office of CBRE represented the landlord, Sacramento-based Panattoni Development Co. The brokers at CBRE were Mark Krison, Scott German and Carole Uhrig.

Spokesmen for Education Management did not return phone calls, but the company's Web site says programs include nursing, business, management, psychology, criminal justice and information technology as well as classes in interior design, graphic design and game art and design.

Education Management has 96 locations in 30 states and Canada. It employs 19,000 full-time, part-time and adjunct faculty and staff. It had more than 136,000 students as of October 2009, the Web site says.

The chairman of the board of Education Management is John R. McKernan Jr., who was governor of Maine from 1987 to 1995.